Results tagged “chinesenewyear”

                 

Braving the rain (which cleared just in time) and visions of Miley Cyrus doing the "ching chong" face, The Year of the Ox was announced in glorious fashion on Sunday. The Chinese New Year's Parade saw tens of thousands of revelers hit the streets. This year's parade also played host to the Hong Kong-born dragon, which was the longest in parade history, stretching at 238 feet long.

Considering the weather lately, maybe you want to do your Chinese New Year celebration, like, indoors. Always attentive to your needs, the SF Symphony is hosting a concert this Sunday at 4pm inside the warm confines of Davies Symphony Hall. How thoughtful. It's a festive family concert with the SFS orchestra, doing a violin concerto and some Tchaikovsky, but there will also be pieces for traditional Chinese instruments, a kids choir performing Jasmine Flower, by Bay Area composer Gang Situ, and some lion's dance. Happy New Year.

While this shouldn't be news, it is. President Barack Obama mentions San Francisco in his most recent blog post honoring Chinese New Year. Eeee! See, it's been, let's see, about eight years since anybody in the Oval Office mentioned Baghdad by the Bay without fire-and-brimstone condemnation.

February may well be our favorite month in San Francisco. Between the Chinese New Year parade, the glorious weather, and Noise Pop, there’s really no better place to be this time of year. Noise Pop officially kicks off tonight. To celebrate we’re reposting an interview with the man behind it all, Kevin Arnold, that we originally ran last year.

href="http://londonist.com/2008/02/air_bound.php"> remove one man from Gatwick.

The Chinese New year parade for the year of the rat, 2008

Good grief, this Chinese New Year business sure does go on for a long time. This weekend, it's a New Year Parade and a New Year Community Fair that'll be tying up traffic. A ton of major east-west lines will be affected on Saturday afternoon -- the 5, the 71, the 38, the F, the 1, and so on.

Is there anyplace in San Francisco more charming than SOMA at night? No, there is not. And this President's Day, it'll be even charminger: construction and traffic reroutes on the Bay Bridge may cause a few heavy-flow days over the holiday weekend. If you're clever, you'll probably want to avoid SOMA in the late-night and early-morning hours. But then again, if you're clever, you probably already do.

Wow, it feels like just yesterday that we posted something about the Symphony's Chinese New Year's concert for last year's Year of the Pig! Well, it's now the Year of the Rat, and the orchestra's raring to go! Last year's 14 year old solo pianist, Peng Peng, is now 15 and this year, he'll be playing a Mozart piano duet with 13-year-old up and comer Conrad Tao. The orchestra will again be helmed by Carolyn Kuan and we expect it'll be a sold out show.

Well, that was fun. Last night out in the center-left bleachers, each time Barry Bonds came to bat, the crowd rose giddily to their feet. The stands brimmed with grins and shouts of encouragement and nervous energy. Mitts were pulled on. With each pitch thrown to him, photoflashes flared all about the stadium like Chinese New Year firecrackers.

Photos from the Chinese New Year Parade

-Repair crews begin to clean up landslide in North Beach.

Did you know that Chinese New Year is celebrated for 15 days? The last day, March 4, 2007, is the Lantern Festival. So, we're not too late in getting this crucial holiday food news to you: Your celebratory moon cakes could be a danger to your health.

YummySF makes us feel all warm and happy about the Chinese New Year. Check out some yummy (indeed!) dim sum pics from a Tai Wu Restaurant outing. Eating dim sum seems like a perfect way to celebrate.

We always thought Chinatown would be a great place to do a Treasure Hunt as we're pretty sure you could find anything there-- artwork, toys, opium, you name it. Well, there is an official Chinatown Treasure Hunt, the 17th annual Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt, and we just happen to be holding a contest to giveaway tickets to take part.

If you're still recovering from the comment war over the Western-calendar New Year dance party with the Falun Gong, we've got a nice non-sectarian Chinese New Year musical performance with the SF Symphony to soothe your spirits!

We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. These are our favorite tidbits from today's offerings:

-State Senate votes for an early primary and to extend term limits. -College students everywhere to put down the bong and stage a national day of protest over the Iraq War. Then they'll go back to using the bong.

-Falun Gong not allowed in this year's Chinese New Year parade. -Almost half of the hospitals in California won't be earthquake compliant by 2012. -A car crash on Highway 101 near Santa Rosa kills four and injures two others.

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing.

But a computer-animated backdrop showing a angel flying down to Earth to rescue a dancer portraying a Falun Gong meditator being beaten senseless by Communist goons, together with a song proclaiming, "The Falun Gong is good!"?

Man, there's isn't any Bay Area connection to Dick Cheney shooting that 78-year-old guy in the face? We're so jealous of DCist and Austinist right now. Well, we gotta content ourselves instead with reporting on the in-your-face shenanigans of Board of Supes President Aaron Peskin and gadfly Wade Randlett instead. We know, it's not nearly as good. According to Matier and Ross, Peskin and Randlett were both at the Chinese Parade VIP stand. (There's a VIP stand for the Chinese New Year parade? Our invite must have gotten lost in the mail.) Randlett, who heads up the controversial moderate-to-conservative group SF SOS, was there with his girlfriend Lorna Ho. Ms. Ho, interestingly, is the SF school district spokesperson, and SF SOS has consistently advocated against school busing as a solution for racial segregation in the district.) Anyways, so Peskin sees Randlett, and blows his stack. Peskin storms up to Ho's boss, Gwen Chan, and demands that Randlett be ejected, saying that Randlett wasn't on the invite list. Chan passed the message to Randlett, who was like, whatever, "We have some history." The quail's in the bush! See the metaphoric buckshot fly, after the jump!

Hey, did you see the Falun Gong protestors at the Chinese New Year parade? They were barred from marching in the parade -- organizers say it's because F.G. is too political -- but they showed up anyway. Those zany kids, always getting into mischief! Just like their leader, Li Hongzi, who caused a stir awhile back when he said, "the biggest cause of society's change today is that people no longer believe in orthodox religion. ... The second reason is that since the beginning of this century, aliens have begun to invade the human mind and its ideology and culture." And then there was that time he said, "The disgusting homosexuality shows the dirty abnormal psychology of the gay who has lost his ability of reasoning" ... which didn't exactly go over well here. So let's see, Falun Gong's boss worries about aliens, hates the gays -- oh yeah, he's also opposed to interracial breeding -- hey, not bad for a group that the Chron blowjobbed as "known for its slow-moving exercises, colorful parades and history of being persecuted." Persecuted? Oh no! We can't imagine what that's like.

Saturday: We're celebrating Chinese New Year by hitting the Chinese New Year Carnival, which runs from January 27 - February 2, daily, 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Admission is free to Walter U. Lum Place, Washington & Clay Street.

This week's stage offerings: Three "Evil Dead" movies. One stage version. Two words: "so best."

Hey photobloggers! Since you're bringing the digital camera downtown on Saturday anyways, don't forget to stop by and get some shots of the Chinese New Year Parade too! The parade starts at 5:30 at Second and Market, rain or shine, and goes until about 8. Lots of cute kids dressed up as emperors, dancing lions, the Centipede-like multi-man 201-foot dragon, and Miss Chinatown 2005 -- plenty of good material for your flickr account! They recommend getting to Chinatown no later than 5, but you can check out the street fair if you're there early. And just a friendly plug: we here at SFist love to show your work -- thanks again to Lackadaisical for the great shots of the Chinese Moon Festival he let us use last year -- so we welcome any and all pictures you want to send from your day!

Investigators have discovered that the fire that killed a fire captain in Los Gatos was caused by either a burning candle or incense stick used to celebrate Chinese New Year. The homeowners had been using the room as a prayer shrine, despite having previously been warned not to use the room at all after a previous fire had started in that same spot. The fire melted through a power line on the roof of the house, which then fell into a puddle of water, electrocuting the firefighter. Two female employees of Woodside's nonprofit Gorilla Foundation have sued the group and its president for sexual harassment. The employees claim that the president, Penny Patterson, informed them that Koko the signing gorilla, who is cared for by the Foundation, has a "nipple fetish" and pressured them on numerous occasions to take off their shirts and show Koko their breasts. Patterson is reported to have said to Koko, "Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples. I will turn my back so Kendra can show you her nipples." In sign language. Patterson also allegedly informed the women that displaying their breasts to Koko was a "normal component to developing a personal bond with the gorilla." Koko should go on the Howard Stern show!

And a Gong xi fa cai and/or Gong hay fat choi, depending on your dialect, to you! It's Chinese New Year's! Lunch is on your Asian-American friends, who should be flush with red envelope cash today. It's the year of the rooster on the 12-year Chinese lunar calendar, and people born either this year or who are turning multiples of 12 are supposedly independent, hardworking, and aren't afraid to tell you about it (roosters crow in all languages, we suppose). Along with the ringing-in of lunar calendar year 4027 comes the usual spate of well-meaning celebration of cultural difference yet sometimes vaguely-Orientalist news coverage has begun as well -- those of you trying to do business in Asia may have some wacky hijinks trying to get in touch with folks who've gone home for the holidays! For those of you who are less inclined to set off firecrackers or shake down the elderly for oranges, Jeff Yang gives some practical suggestions on celebrating Chinese New Year in a more modern way. The annual Chinatown parade not this weekend but next, on the 19th. This weekend, though, is the also-beloved Miss Chinatown USA Pageant, at the Palace of Fine Arts.